Omega Ronin: Palace of Xalagar | Song (2025)

It all started with a weird sound that I made using the Arturia Microfreak synthesizer. The Microfreak is a neat little tool for synth sound design, but for some inexplicable reason, it rarely ends up in final tracks. Well, I decided to keep that weird little sound and build upon it, but I didn’t like what I built.

So, I sat on that song (and the weird sound) for a bit until I found myself working on another song using the Roland Juno-X, a modern Roland synthesizer that I use a lot in my synthwave music workflow. Now, the Juno-X and Microfreak are two totally different animals, but for whatever reason, I started to fumble with the “whammy bar” on the Juno while running a sequence to make it sound drunk. I liked the results. It reminded me of the Microfreak weird sound that I made.

I recorded some voice dialog about something stupid like a space palace in between universes (like usual) and put it over the weird sound. Then I finished the rest of the song totally off-key and off-center on the Juno. The voice seemed distracting, so I removed it, but kept the intro weird sound. And that's that! That's how Palace of Xalagar came to be.

Living in a palace trapped between two universes can't possibly be easy, I mean, just imagine the tax complications. But also, there’s probably different monsters and maybe completely different “physics” or “reality” if that’s even a thing. This song conveys that (maybe). I'm sure it has a nice view, though.

I created the core of the beat using Korg Volca Drum and an FX pedal. It has a neat shuffle that sounds like what it must sound like if you shuffled around your space palace in slippers. Between the Microfreak, the Juno-X, and the Volca Drum, the whole thing turned into a blend of odd textures, retro-futuristic tones, and the kind of electronic music production quirks that always seem to sneak into my tracks.

At the end of the day, Palace of Xalagar is another one of my strange sonic experiments that somehow turned into a full track. It mixes bits of synthwave synthesizer tones, odd electronic textures, and a few happy accidents that came from hardware chaos. If you're into retro electronic music or the kind of cinematic electronic music inspired by 1980s sci-fi weirdness, this one probably fits right in your playlist.